The University of Florida College of Medicine is scrubbing "anti-racism" pages from its website in the wake of a report detailing the influence of leftwing ideology on the school’s curriculum.
The report from Do No Harm, a group opposed to identity politics in medical education, was released November 22 and highlighted a slew of activist statements by the public medical school, many of them posted to its official website. A week later—after a flurry of unflattering media coverage—the College of Medicine had taken down at least three of those posts, including a statement on the admissions office homepage declaring that "BLACK LIVES MATTER."
That statement also condemned "systemic oppression" and touted the admissions office’s commitment to "equity in healthcare." In addition, the school removed a webpage that offered a list of "resources for combating systemic racism," including a set of guidelines instructing "white allies" to "assume racism is everywhere, every day," and a page that described the school’s learning objectives related to "health equity."
Though the College of Medicine declined to comment on the removal, it did offer an unsolicited defense of its admissions policies.
"We have a holistic admissions process that welcomes students from all backgrounds, including those from underrepresented backgrounds," the medical school’s director of communications, Cody Hawley, said. "In accordance with state law, our admissions policy does not favor or give priority to any group."
This is not the first time the medical establishment has backpedaled in the face of public scrutiny. Brigham and Women’s Hospital distanced itself last year from a proposal by two of its doctors, Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse, to offer "preferential care" to minority patients through the hospital’s cardiology service. And in January, Minnesota and Utah stopped rationing COVID drugs based on race after a Washington Free Beacon exposé drew attention to the practice.
Such initiatives nonetheless reflect a worldview that is being inculcated at medical schools across the country. Forty-four percent of medical schools now reward scholarship on "diversity, inclusion, and equity" through their promotion policies, according to a report this month by the Association of American Medical Colleges, while 70 percent mandate courses on "diversity, inclusion, or cultural competence." The report also found that over a third of medical schools offer extra funding to departments that hit diversity goals, with half requiring diversity statements for job applicants.
The University of Florida College of Medicine is a microcosm of these trends. The school’s now-deleted list of anti-racism resources included How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, who says that the "only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination"—a view that would appear to license the sort of discriminatory policies that Utah and Minnesota eventually scrapped.
In addition, the school expects all students to follow a "Code of Ethics" that includes "speaking out against social injustice, racism, prejudice, and inequity," and requires hiring committees to complete diversity trainings created by the Racial Equity Institute, which states that "all of our systems, institutions and outcomes emanate from the racial hierarchy on which the United States was built."
That focus on progressive programming extends to the university as a whole. The public university has a "Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement," a department on "multicultural and diversity affairs," and an entire website on anti-racism. Its library alone sports 11 "diversity, equity, and inclusion" officers who oversee "justice related trainings" and curate a collection of "anti-racist resources" for the university.
The school’s progressive apparatchiks have gotten it in trouble before: The university library had to rename its largest study space, named "The Karl Marx Study Room" since 2014, in March 2022 amid public outcry.
Do No Harm is chaired by Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a Washington Free Beacon enthusiast and the father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb.